Are Bonuses Beneficial for Online Casinos?

Today you will hardly find a casino that wouldn’t offer its clients various bonuses. In the times of my bonus hunting, I was searching for the most attractive casino bonuses that I could get good money for. Unfortunately, those times are long gone. Today it’s rather difficult to find a more or less beneficial bonus at the online casino.

Online casinos grant players bonuses not because they have loads of money. The gambling world has a tough competition; new casinos enter the market almost every day, and attracting new players has become a really tough task. This is where reputation and trust play the crucial role. No one will risk their money at the unknown casino, if there is even a slight chance that it will take the players’ money and just disappear.

This is why online casinos offer bonuses. For players, this is a great chance to test a new online casino while using minimum of their own money. However, bonuses are very unbeneficial thing for online casinos. Let me explain why.

Let’s take a simplified slot with just three reels with 10 symbols on each. Nine out of ten symbols are “empty”, while the tenth brings you a win. Thus, the only winning combination consists of three symbols and comes up once in 1000 times. Calculations are simple: multiply probabilities of every symbol being displayed, i.e. (1 / 10) *(1 / 10) * (1 / 10) = 1 / 1000. Let’s assume that the slot has a 95% RTP (Return To Player). If a winning combination is displayed, the amount the player will get back equals to (amount*950).

Now let’s assume that 1,000 people registered at the casinos and received a $5 bonus on their first deposit each. Wagering requirements are (bonus x30). Here’s what we have:

1,000 made a $5 deposit = $5,000

1,000 received a $5 bonus= $5,000

The total is $10,000. Suppose that 1,000 players made a$10 bet each.

Suppose that 999 lost. The total of all bets is $9,990. The casino gets 5% of this amount, i.e. $499.5

1 player hits a winning combination and wins $9.950. With the bet of$10, the casino receives $0.5.

With x30 wagering requirements, after the first bet you’ll have to clear another $5 * 30 — $10 = $140. This means 14 bets, $10 each. Suppose all bets lose. Then the casino gets another $7.

Chances of the player hitting another winning combination are awfully small: 14 multiplied by 1/ 1000 is 1.4%

So what do we have? The casino spent $5,000 on bonuses and earned as little as $507 ($499,5 + $0,5 + $7). The casino’s total loss is $4,493. For the casino to have the loss covered, the player must make bets for the total amount of $100,000 and never hit a winning combination.

This partly explains high wagering requirements for various types of bonuses. From the example above it’s clear that the wagering requirement around x30 is very beneficial for the player. If you are lucky to find the casino where you receive similar bonuses on EVERY deposit and can play High Variance slots, you will surely win lots of money.